Three views of Shakespeare

A Comparison of Openings

The main concern of a screenwriter, a major part of such
questions as; will someone produce my script, will the movie be
successful, Etc., is; Will the first ten minutes of the movie
give the audience a reason to see the next 110 or so? The
opening scene has to have a "hook", something to grab the
audience's attention from the beginning, until more of the movie
can supply additional items of interest. From the opening scenes
of The Three Musketeers, set in the 17th century, where the
viewer immediately sees two men doing their best to run each
other through, to Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, set in the
23rd century, where the viewer sees the major cast get killed off
in the first five minutes, a good movie has had a hook.

The situation is the same with Shakespeare, and I am going to
examine the opening scenes of the plays The Tragedy of King
Richard the Second, The First Part of King Henry the Fourth, and,
The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, to see which gets the
audience's attention the fastest.

The Tragedy of King Richard The Second, better known as
Richard II, begins with a courtly argument. Richard is on the
throne and is about to face two of his nobles, each with his
bowels in an uproar and wishing to accuse the other of treason.
To make the point clear, each drops several pounds of steel glove
on the other's foot, demonstrating with painful certainty that
they would much rather be pointing swords than fingers. Richard
R., Rex, not Rich, intervenes, giving an opening argument of
"Wrath kindled gentlemen, Be rul'd by me . . ." There are
several other and better reasons not to do so, which turn up
later, but, for the moment, the nobles declare instead that the
king's rule doesn't measure up to their chivalrous code of honor.
Instead of a peace, they would rather have many from each other,
Richard sets the court date for a few weeks hence, and all Exit
(with others).

The First Part of King Henry the Fourth, (1 Henry IV), begins
with a state of the kingdom address given by, who else,
considering the title, Henry IV. In it, he declares that
England's been a mess, but now everything is fine and everybody
together is about to go pick on the pagans, take souvenir photos
of the Mount of Olives, and so forth.

At this point the Earl of Westmoreland announces that a
Welshman (Glendower) with a beef (Mortimer) has been butchering
English soldiers, and that cousin of Mortimer (Hotspur) is being
a royal pain and isn't handing over all his best Scotch. Henry
comments that it would have been convenient had his son and
Hotspur switched places, but exchanges that for an announcement
that this year is out, like everyone else, it'll have to be next
year in Jerusalem.

The opening of The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, (2
Henry IV), is simple, amounting only to "Enter Rumor, painted in
tongues", making for rather noisy digestion. Rumor announces he
is a talkative fellow, tending to give tongue in all directions,
mostly forked. In this case he's forking out to one and all that
the firm of Henry and Henry received the point of Douglas and
Hotspur's cutting remarks and adjourned from the court. However,
for the audience's benefit, he blurts out that the opposite is
actually true, and the two Henry's did indeed have the winning
arguments.

In the opening scene of Richard II there is an impending clash
of armored knights out to darken one another's reputation, and
open, if veiled, defiance of the reigning monarch. It is
apparent from the start that if trouble is not afoot, at least
everyone's glove is.

1 Henry IV starts with a long winded "All's well", with the
trouble arriving courtesy of a messenger, rather then being in
the Royal Lap from the start. This, I think, is a good
beginning, but lacks the impact of Richard II.

2 Henry IV is the same, with a lone actor telling of recent
goings on, apparently while waiting for the audience to come in
from the refreshment stand and find their seats.

Of the three, I prefer the opening scene of Richard II. Not
only does it start with an active fight from the beginning, as
opposed to mentions of one, but for the sake of continuity, is
the first in the sequence of the three plays together.

Three Examples of Comedic Villany

The three plays The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About
Nothing, and The Winter's Tale, have a number of things in
common. They were all written by some Englishman named Willy
Shakespeare (Shakespear, Shakspere, etc.), feature more subplot
twists than a soap opera, have lovers, and have villains of one
sort or another. And a comparison of the assorted heavies in
each play shows that what they do reflects in how they end up at
the finish of the play.

In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, what there are in the line of
villains are the forest outlaws who aren't really vile un's, and
who don't even appear until act IV. As one of them, quaintly
named "Third Outlaw", states in IV, i, 44-46; "Know, then, that
some of us are gentlemen,/Such as the fury of ungoverned
youth/Thrust from the company of aweful men." Third then
continues in lines 48 and 49 that he was considered aweful "For
practicing to steal a lady,/an heir, and near allied unto the
Duke." Even if Italy was made of city-states, this apparently
deserved only banishment, even if it was a capitol crime.
Another, named Second, but with the same last name as Third,
apparently had ensured that someone got the point of certain
cutting remarks. Aside from that, and "for such like petty
crimes as these" (IV, i, 52), they aren't that bad. As a matter
of fact, not only do they have specific injunctions against
"outrages/On silly women or poor passengers," (IV, i, 71-72), but
they elect Valentine to be their leader after hearing he is
multilingual. Apparently they could use someone who could
explain in small Latine and lesse Greeke that Karl really did say
not to leave home without it as the outlaws went for the cash.

The outlaws don't turn up again until V, iii, when they serve
as the means for the type of grand disentanglement that Charles
Dickens tried to work to death years later. They have one major
member of the cast, Valentine, and capture another, Sylvia, as
she's running from Proteus and Julia (disguised as Sebastian),
who are also quickly caught. Everyone then points out everyone
else's infidelities just in time for the Duke and Thurio to
arrive. Seeing as he's in the area, and the outlaws really
hadn't been doing too much, the Duke then pardons them all, the
better to call the play a comedy.

Of the three plays, Much Ado About Nothing has the real bad
guy. While Don John is a half brother of Don Pedro, he is, as
stated many times, a bastard. In addition, he's illegitimate.
He's the type that goes in for pulling wings off flies, taking
candy from babies, and foreclosing mortgages, all to keep himself
entertained.

When he is first introduced, he says thankfully in I, i, 151-
152 that he is not of many words, saying, thankfully; "I thank
you. I am not a man of many words, but I/thank you." He has
plenty of words, though, when he is next seen in I, iii. His
general philosophy of "Misery loves company, and I'm miserable"
is revealed, along with the story that Don Pedro had recently
found him to be revolting, and while forgiving him for it, still
trusts him (Don John) as far as he (Don Pedro) can throw the
theatre Messina.

Almost midway through the scene, Enter Borrachio with the news
of the impending marriage of a hero named Claudio and a claudio
heroine named Hero. Don John is always one to be the architect
of and engineer trouble and asks "Will it serve for any model to
build mischief on?" Models aren't usually good for foundation,
but it will, and he does. At a party which confuses those in the
cast and some in the audience as well, he adds to the mess by
hinting to Claudio that Hero isn't quite what Claudio thinks.
Also, after a convincing bit of long distance substitution, he
has the divorce in front of a judge even before a priest has
gotten hold of the marriage.

With all this behind, if not beneath, him, the play ends on
the note (struck up by pipers) of vengeance extracted by
Benedick, a budding dentist eager to cut his teeth.

The villain of sorts in The Winter's Tale is Autolycus, an all
around pickpocket, thief, and con man, listed as "a rogue", who
was appropriately named after a legendary forerunner. He wanders
into IV, III with a verse opening (he's singing) of "When
daffodils begin to peer", an obvious suggestion of nobility being
blooming idiots, or at least going to pot. Two verses later, he
stops dead and announces that while he once worked for Florizel,
Bohemia's Crown Prince, he'd now be on unemployment, if Bohemia
had it. After finishing his song, he then explains that he now
makes his living pulling linen off of hedges and wool over eyes.
Clown, a sheep to shear preparing to shear sheep enters, and
Autolycus crawls into action.

A purse, a pack full of cheap trinkets, two commercials, a few
songs, many more purses, and a handful of coins later, one is
left with the impression that Autolycus is a mild version of Don
John. In IV, iv, 683-686, he comments on royal illegitimates,
that "if I thought it were a piece if honesty to acquaint the
King withall,/I would not do't. I hold it the more knavery to
conceal it; and therein am I constant to my profession."
However, he's already shown great distaste for, of all things,
getting hung, and, at the end of the play, decides to reform.

Opening Moves

Someone once commented of a certain movie that "It stated at
8:00. When I looked at my watch at midnight, it was only 8:15."
Since the comment was intended as a review of it, that movie must
have started out extremely slowly, and slowed further from there.
For a movie or play to be interesting, it has to get an
audience's attention from the beginning, then keep it. This
paper is a comparison of the opening scenes of Othello, The Moor
of Venice, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra to see if they can
do this.

Othello, the lead in Othello, has a characteristic which not
only gets mentioned all through the play, but which gets brought
up in the title. It seems he's black. This is something which
in part influences the behavior of a number of people throughout
the action. In the first scene, it gets brought up as Iago and
Roderigo enter.

Iago, it seems, is the standard bearer to the General Othello,
as well as the particular one. Recently it was promotion time,
and much to Iago's disgust, he was passed up in favor of a man
named Michael Cassio, of no relation to the electronics people.
Iago has decided that he doesn't like Othello, and Roderigo
agrees with him.

Having decided this at some ungodly hour of the night, they
pick on a particular nobleman by yelling their heads off, raising
Cain and Senator Brabantio, who demands to know what is going on,
saying, "What is the reason of this terrible summons? What is
the matter there?" (I, i, 83-84) It is then explained why
Brabantio in particular was picked as Iago delivers some cheerful
howls of "an old black ram is tupping your white ewe." (I, i,
89-90) Othello has just run off with Brabantio's daughter, and
by the end of the scene, both Brabantio and the audience have
indeed figured this out.

At this point, one unfamiliar with the play can now assume
that what follows will be some underhanded racial attacks,
possibly followed by a divorce of some sort, probably the
daughter from either Othello or her family. This scene gives no
hint that Iago will drive Othello to a fit of murderous jealousy
and cause the deaths of many, including Othello, his wife, and
probably ultimately, Iago himself.

Act One, Scene One of King Lear introduces the two main plots
and projects the action of one of them from the start. Edgar and
Edmund, the illegitimate son and legitimate bastard,
respectively, fathered by the Earl of Glouchester, are made
known. After this, Lear jets in, announces he'll divide up his
kingdom among his daughters, and demands to be flattered.
Furthermore, he almost does this in one sentence, making it
obvious that this territorial division has strings attached to
it. Gonorrhea, Goneril, or something like that, and her sister
Regan, immediately pitch in. The third daughter, Cordelia, is
left to chew her nails during this, quickly showing that
Shakespeare may have turned out a poet, but she didn't. So Lear
turns her out and gives her share to the first two sisters.

This opening scene sets up practically everything. Almost
from the start, one can see how the play is going to go, and one
can sit back and enjoy it. Will Lear come to his sense in time?
What will the sisters do? Stay tuned for the next scene!

Antony and Cleopatra also starts with the main characters
offstage and begins with a pair of soldiers giving a state of the
Antony address. Then, Flourish, Enter Antony, Cleopatra, and
Company, and the two lovebirds giggle over each other
momentarily. When a messenger arrives from Rome, he gets sent
packing after a few sarcastic remarks from Cleopatra. the pair
giggle some more, Exeunt with the train, the soldiers comment
some more, and they too Exeunt.

All one gets as an interest out of this is that Antony can
decide between running an army or sitting with Cleopatra. A
viewer does not realize from this that with the right moves,
Antony could very simply provide a different Roman Empire than
what actually occurred. The opening scene of the act simply
hints of a romance, with dutiful soldiers floating in the
background, and little more.

Of the three plays, it would seem that King Lear has the best
of the openings. It has all the main characters and it gives the
conflict from the start. To grab, and keep, the audience's
attention, this is, more often than not, a basic requirement.